Warlocks being broken?

[Shin Okada]

And what warlock doesn't start each day casting fell flight 100 times? It only takes 10 minutes, and you would have to be extremely unlucky to have greater dispel punch through all them of them at one go.

Good point. But imagine if the said warlock meets a rival warlock who uses Voracious Dispelling .....

 

[NewJeffCT]

Good point. But imagine if the said warlock meets a rival warlock who uses Voracious Dispelling .....

Interesting - I didn't think you could keep casting that to make you virtually immune to regular dispels.

 

[Eldritch_Lord]

Interesting - I didn't think you could keep casting that to make you virtually immune to regular dispels.

You can always keep casting the same spell over and over on the same target (the particulars of overlapping spells like that are even covered in the PHB), it just (A) won't provide any additional benefit until the first one is dispelled and (B) isn't worth it unless it's limited use, so primary casters don't do it.

 

[Starbuck_II]

Yes. At higher level, you will meet more and more opponents with SR. Fiends, dragons, NPCs with appropriate spells and items, etc. Vitriolic Blast ignores SR. But what if the opponent is also immune or highly resistant to acid?

Also note that spell-like abilities can be dispelled. A warlock can enjoy flying 24 hr/day. But if Fell Flight is dispelled, it will not let you land gently like Fly spell does.

If you want to use dispelling yourself, your caster level counts.

And when you start to make magic items (at 12th+ level), your caster level does matter much.

Bah, just yse the Warlock benefits for buffs.
Make a melee dude/ranged dude and go to town.

I made in a PBP game a Warlock/Binder/Swordsage that is pretty good. He has flight, Entropic Warding (so less ranged attacks hit), summon swarm for when guy has no DR but hard to hit, etc.

 

[Jhaelen]

Interesting - I didn't think you could keep casting that to make you virtually immune to regular dispels.

I probably would never have thought of doing it, but, yeah, it would definitely work

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

*Note to self: spamming your Warlock PC with Fell Fly makes him into Julian Sands*

 

[pawsplay]

As a GM, I've run a few warlocks as NPCs. Although rather effective and surprisingly versatile, they were consistently outmaneuvered by the PCs. The wizard kept casting things they didn't have counters for, the cleric could undo their damage and warlocks lack special defenses to protect them from spells, the scout did almost as much damage with a much better to-hit/AC ratio, and the paladin had really nice saves, relegating them to being low-calibre blasters.

As PCs, I think they are probably more effective than as NPCs. However, if you do not want to get sidelined, I suggest selecting invocations carefully to cover a wide variety of foes, using feats primarily for ranged weapon feats or invocation power ups, and thinking of the warlock as an equipment-dependent class much like a rogue or a fighter. Warlocks need cloaks, good armor or bracers, and a wide variety of magic items to activate with UMD. Also, the primarily blast-oriented warlock should emphasize Dex over Cha. It is also not a terrible idea to add a single level of another class... fighter (martial weapons and PBS as a bonus feat), rogue (sneak attack from invisibility and extra spells), marshal (floating bonus to go with unlimited blasts), etc.

Warlocks overpowered? Maybe in a grinding game with low treasure, few resting points, and large numbers of lower HD opponents.

 

[Asha'man]

I concur with most of what has been said about warlocks. They're a fun, well-balanced class with a distinctive niche, which is more than can be said for most non-core base classes. If they're overpowered at any point, it would have to be at level 1, when they're the only ones with touch attacks and Shatter at will is really useful, but that's it. In fact, at higher levels they fall increasingly behind, unless you have a great amount of consumable magic stuff. (Staffs, etc.) Virtually other classes have some way to bring the hurt hard when they really need to, but the closest the Warlock gets is Quicken Spell-like ability.

On the other hand, I really don't understand why people say warlocks make bad NPCs. They rock! As solo villains they're distinctive and versatile, (heck, Flee the Scene was made for recurring villains) while being far less headache to run than a "real" caster. And because of their steady damage output, they run no real risk of randomly killing a PC. And as mooks they're one of the few classes that can always do *something*, even in fights where they're completely outclassed. Pile on the Eldritch Blasts, Shatters and Darkness.

As for not living up to their CR, it's true that I wouldn't run a solo warlock against an equal-leveled party, but the thing about CR is that it's descriptive. If a monster (or, particularly, an NPC) isn't living up to its listed CR, the CR is wrong and you can just lower it! Use MM1 monsters' stats for benchmarks.

 

[Falling Icicle]

And what warlock doesn't start each day casting fell flight 100 times? It only takes 10 minutes, and you would have to be extremely unlucky to have greater dispel punch through all them of them at one go.

If a player tried that in a game I ran, they'd get a really heavy book thrown at them.

 

[Runestar]

If a player tried that in a game I ran, they'd get a really heavy book thrown at them.

Then you would have to let him know up front that such a move will not be tolerated, since it is legit by the rules. I am pretty sure that is the whole point of having an ability usable at-will, to let you spam it every chance you get.

On the other hand, I really don't understand why people say warlocks make bad NPCs.

They are bad from a challenge POV, not flavour, IMO. Their damage scales very slowly, while their invocations are flat out inferior to spells from a caster of equivalent level, so you would be hard pressed to have it pose a challenge to a party. At-will abilities aren't really worth that much to an npc who is unlikely to last more than one encounter.

Contrast this with a wizard npc, who doesn't need to bother that he won't have any spells left over for the day, since you won't expect him to survive said encounter with the PCs. So what if he has limited spell slots? Even after factoring in buffs, there are only so many spells you can have him spam over those few rounds.